


The Only Water In The Forest

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [44]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: Little Melody Pond was lost at the Battle of Demons Run.  Now Amy and Rory are reunited with their daughter at SHIELD, just not in a way either of them could ever have imagined.





	The Only Water In The Forest

**Author's Note:**

> If it were possible to throw a virtual parade in appreciation of my awesome beta, **like-a-raven** , we’d all be up to our knees in ticker tape and confetti. Mind the brass band and step carefully where the horses have been. 
> 
> This story picks up right where _Demons Run_ left off, and let’s just say that with great revelation comes a lot of messy emotional fallout. These people broke my heart a few times in writing this, but there were some lovely surprises too. Thank you all for your patience in waiting for this one. Happy reading!

_September 2012_  
_SHIELD Headquarters_

River Song. The girl who finally made sense. Little Melody Pond all grown up. 

The Doctor had worked it out before they’d even left Demons Run. He’d worked it out before he’d picked up the green silk prayer leaf that Amy had left discarded, before he’d read her baby’s name in the language of people of the Gamma Forest. Lovely place, the Gamma Forest; endless stretches of trees cut by a wide, blue river.

Nick decreed that Amy and Rory should both be checked over in SHIELD Medical. That wasn’t such a bad idea, really. The Doctor waited until Agent Washington had escorted them into an elevator before he walked across the reception room.

River, Clint, and Phil watched him approach. The Doctor could see their wariness in the tense line of Clint’s shoulders. He heard it in River’s voice when she greeted him. He saw it in the way Phil stood just a little bit in front of the two of them, ready to step between the Doctor and his agents. 

The Doctor summoned up as much of a smile as he could. “It’s good to see you again, Melody Pond.”

If anything, that made the tension thicker. They expected him to be angry with them. For River to be standing here, now, a veteran agent of SHIELD, they must have known how Demons Run was going to go. 

The Doctor wasn’t angry with them though. Angry at this situation? Yes. Angry at the Silence and the Academy? Oh ho, there were no words. But the Doctor wasn’t angry at River or Clint or Phil. How could he possibly be? Even if the outcome of Demons Run could have been changed (and there were never any guarantees, Time being the fickle mistress that she was) if they had told the Doctor, they would have undone River’s whole life.

“So.” River’s brown eyes were dark and serious. “You finally have your answer.”

“I do.” His nagging curiosity over River could be laid to rest. “All that time wondering where you came from and I was travelling with the answers the whole time. Amy and Rory.” The Doctor shook his head. “They’re beside themselves.”

“I know,” River said. “I never wanted them to get hurt, but it wasn’t avoidable.”

“No. I suppose not,” the Doctor replied. “Well, you’re going to go tell them the truth, right now.”

“I’m not so sure right now is such a good--”

_“Now!”_

The Doctor caught his self-control before it slipped through his fingers entirely. _This isn’t her fault._

“You’re going to go and tell them,” he said, more calmly, “because right now all they know is that their child is gone. They’re suffering because they don’t know what’s happening to her. So, you need to go tell them. They need to see you so that they know that you’re all right. Do you understand?”

“Okay.” River’s expression softened in understanding. She looked no less apprehensive, but now it wasn’t the Doctor that she was apprehensive of. “Okay, I’ll go talk to them now.”

“ _We’ll_ go talk to them now,” Clint said.

“All three of us,” Phil added. “We’ve been in this together from the beginning. It’s only right we do this part together.”

The Doctor had no objections to this. “After you.”

*****

Fury watched without comment as Strike Team Delta and the Doctor stepped aboard an elevator and went off to have their date with family drama. He would bet good money that they had completely forgotten that they’d had an audience during that little interlude. Given that their survival often hinged on them being aware of their surroundings, that spoke volumes about how fucked up this day was.

The rest of the Avengers, on the other hand, were transfixed by the scene that had just gone down.

“Okay,” Stark said, “would someone care to explain to me what the hell just happened?”

“River is Melody? The baby?” Banner said. “That’s what they were saying, right?”

“How is that even possible?” Rogers said. “We just saw the baby. I mean, she was a decoy, but she was a _baby.”_

“We saw her thousands of years in the future on the other side of the galaxy,” Thor pointed out. He shrugged slightly under his armor. “Many things become possible when the Doctor is involved.”

“Fury, you’re being awfully quiet,” Stark said, turning to him. “Are you going to tell us that you didn’t know anything about this?”

“I could tell you that.” Fury pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. “It would be a lie, but I could.”

“What a surprise.” Fury had thought Rogers would be pissed. Instead he just sounded tired and there was a thick layer of _oh, this should be good_ dry humor in his voice. It made Fury oddly proud. Rogers had come a long way. “You wouldn’t want to fill us in by any chance, would you?”

“It’s not really my story to tell,” Fury said. 

The other Avengers looked disgruntled to various degrees, but they all nodded. Fury sighed.

“On the other hand,” he added, taking a seat in a vacant chair, “I kind of doubt that Song’s going to want to go through this story twice. Get comfortable. It’s a long one.”

He could do this for Song. Fury knew her story well enough. Hell, he knew a few parts of it that even _she_ didn’t know yet. 

Those parts would stay classified.

*****

Amy Pond had two simultaneous and nearly overwhelming desires.

The first was to curl up in a ball and sleep for a week. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how it was possible to feel so tired and still be walking.

The second was to get back aboard the TARDIS and start scouring Time and Space for her baby. Melody was out there somewhere with the Silence. The Doctor had told them about what he’d found in Demons Run’s databases and about Madame Kovarian’s gloating call. Kovarian wanted to turn Melody into a weapon. Amy didn’t even want to think about what that was supposed to involve.

When she got her hands on Kovarian or Dr. Weatherby or Metal-Armed James or anyone else who was part of the Silence she was going to make them regret that they’d ever laid a finger on her baby.

In the meantime, her head was starting to swim from the conflicting impulses. Or maybe that was the shock. Rory kept saying that she was in shock. Amy felt like telling him to look in a bloody mirror. Rory, like many a good Englishman, was perpetually pale. Now he looked absolutely ghost-like.

They followed Agent Nadine Washington to SHIELD Medical. Amy saw people literally stopping to stare at them, but it wasn’t until they were almost to their destination that she realized that it was because Rory was still in full Roman uniform. A Roman Centurion, just strolling through the SHIELD base. Amy had to bite the inside of her cheek to hold back a fit of giggles. 

_Your head is starting to come undone, Pond,_ she thought. _Might want to look to that._

Dr. Judith Levine met them at the infirmary and immediately ushered them back to a private room. Amy shuddered a bit at the sterile smell and the gleaming surfaces and the crisp white sheets. It was all too reminiscent of being back at Demons Run. Dr. Levine must have noticed, because she seemed to try to move the exam along as efficiently as possible.

It was still time-consuming. There were a lot of questions to go through as Dr. Levine tried to ascertain if Amy’s stay with the Silence had harmed her physically. Amy wasn’t sure if Dr. Levine even knew what she was looking for, but Amy answered them as best she could.

Agent Washington came and went. Once she appeared with a duffle bag of clothes for Amy and Rory to change into, SHIELD sweats and t-shirts in black and grey. Amy was more than happy to shed her rumpled white scrubs. Another time she came back with cardboard cartons of food and two styrofoam cups. Amy picked at the food because Dr. Levine encouraged her, but focused most of her attention on the cup of strong, well-sugared tea. More than once, Agent Washington and Dr. Levine conferred quietly in the corner, but Amy didn’t care enough to pay much attention.

The blood draw was last. “I just want the lab to check for any abnormalities,” Dr. Levine said. “I should have the results by tomorrow. You’ll still be here, won’t you?”

“I. . .I don’t really know,” Amy said. She looked to Rory who was sitting at the other end of the bed. He seemed much more tired now that he wasn’t wearing his armor. He just shrugged as if to say _buggered if I know._

“Okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out later,” Dr. Levine said, smoothing a label onto the vial of blood. “I’m going to send this down to the lab. The Doctor and Agents Coulson, Barton, and Song are out in the waiting area. They were hoping to see you. Is it all right if I send them back?”

“Yes, please,” Amy said. It would be good to see some friendly faces. And maybe the Doctor would have some ideas about where to start searching for Melody.

*****

River sat between Clint and Phil on a sofa in the waiting room and wondered how the hell she was going to break this news to Amy and Rory.

Just finding the right words was a daunting prospect. _I’m your daughter. It’s me, Melody._ River resigned herself to the fact that there was no way she was going to be able to do it without sounding like she was a character in a third-rate soap opera. 

She felt like she really ought to be better prepared than this. After all, she had spent literally her entire life thinking about this moment, the grand reunion. As a child, back when she was still the Silence’s good little savior in training, she’d fantasized about bravely rescuing Amy and Rory from the Doctor’s clutches and then dramatically revealing herself to be their daughter. It had been her favorite daydream. 

The reality of meeting Amy and Rory for the first time (from River’s end) had, of course, been very different. On that June day in Queens in the year 2000 her entire life had come undone. Amy and Rory had already known who she was, though they had called her by the ludicrous name of _River Song_ instead of Melody Pond. That was the day that River had learned the Silence had lied to her for her whole life. She had killed the Doctor then raised him from the dead, and ended the day in a hospital bed on the other side of the Atlantic.

Amy, Rory, and the Doctor had left her there in hospital, returning to whatever near-distant future they’d traveled from and, at the time, River hadn’t understood why. She had been scared and hurt and angry and so, so alone. That loneliness had been her constant companion for five years, until she’d met Clint and Phil, and her life had changed again.

River understood now that _that_ was why Amy and Rory had left her behind. They had known where her life was going to take her. They had hurt her in the short term so that River could have what she had now. They had done the selfless thing so that she could be happy.

Queens was River’s past, but still in Amy and Rory’s future, and River tried to take heart from her memories of it. Amy and Rory had cared about her in that time and place. It had been clearly evident in the way they’d talked to her. And they had effectively given her up in order to ensure her happiness. So, even if this confession went badly, forgiveness must follow fairly close behind, right?

But to get to forgiveness, River was first going to have to hurt Amy and Rory. In spite of her best efforts, River knew that she must be radiating tension. Clint wrapped his arm around her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Nope,” she replied, leaning into him. “You?”

Clint answered with a quick, almost silent laugh. “Oh, fuck no.”

On River’s other side, Phil shifted, leaning forward to try to catch the eye of the fourth member of their party, who hadn’t stopped pacing since they’d arrived. “Doctor, I know you’re trying to do this in the kindest way possible, but don’t you think we should give them a few days? Maybe ease Amy and Rory into this?”

The Doctor tossed a small brass vase from hand to hand as he walked by the sofa. He’d been fidgeting with anything he could lay his hands on in the waiting room: random knickknacks, boxes of tissues, magazines, hard candy in cellophane wrappers. River wasn’t sure if it was leftover adrenaline, or if the Doctor was as nervous about the upcoming conversation at the rest of them.

Probably neither. She couldn’t imagine the Doctor being subject to post-mission jitters or being scared of breaking bad news.

“No,” the Doctor said. “Right now, they’re in limbo, which is bad enough. But if we let this go for a few days they’ll talk themselves ‘round to having hope that they’ll get their daughter—the baby version—back. That will be worse.”

“Right. There’s never going to be a good time to do this, so why don’t we just wait a--”

_“No,”_ the Doctor said firmly, pacing back past the sofa again.

Phil sat back with a sigh and muttered something under his breath. River was pretty sure it was, _“You can’t tell a damn Time Lord **anything.** ”_

“Honestly, Phil, I’d rather just get it over with,” River said. This was classic Anti-Interrogation 101. The worst part of being tortured was anticipating the pain.

Finally (or possibly all too soon) Dr. Levine came out and said that they could go back and see Amy and Rory. River tried to be philosophical as they filed back to the infirmary room. The Universe was full of surprises. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as she was anticipating. 

Amy and Rory were sitting side-by-side on an infirmary bed, dressed in SHIELD-issue athletic gear. They looked considerably steadier than they had in the brief glimpse River had caught of them when the disembarked from the TARDIS. Amy’s eyes were still red, but the old determined spark was starting to creep back into them.

“Doctor,” she said. There was a hopeful note in her voice. “I know it’s way too soon for you to have found anything, but. . .have you found anything?”

Leave it to Amy to bring a faint _deer-in-the-headlights_ look to the Doctor’s face. He looked to River, who just shook her head slightly and stepped forward.

“He has, actually,” River said. 

She caught herself twisting her fingers together in a _very_ old nervous habit, one she thought had been trained out of her a few regenerations ago. River immediately stopped, dropping her hands to her sides. Amy and Rory were watching her expectantly.

“He found Melody.” _Stop playing coy, Song. Just tell them._ River forged ahead before either of them could get a question out. “It’s me. I’m Melody.”

****

As Phil had predicted, the talk didn’t go well. For starters, Amy initially refused to believe River.

“No! No, I don’t know what you’re all playing at or what kind of sick joke this is supposed to be, but it’s not true. It’s not possible.” 

Amy looked like she was ready to hit someone to punctuate her point. Rory stood behind her, his hands lightly clasped around her upper arms. It might have been for support, it might have been to hold back a wave of Scottish wrath. Rory just stared at River. Phil didn’t know if it bothered River, but Phil sure as hell felt a little unsettled. 

“It _is_ possible, Amy,” the Doctor said. “It’s more than possible. Look. You had the evidence here the whole time.” The Doctor fished the green silk prayer leaf out of the pocket of his tweed jacket. “The TARDIS translation matrix takes a little longer to kick in with the written word, but you can see it now. It’s your daughter’s name in the language of the people of the Gamma Forest. Just read it.”

“I know my daughter’s name,” Amy insisted as the Doctor all but forced the prayer leaf into her hand. 

“Yes, but the people of the Gamma Forest don’t have a word for _pond._ ” River’s voice was low and gentle, like she was talking her way through a hostage negotiation. “Because the only water in the forest is the river.”

Amy held her gaze for a long moment before opening her hand and smoothing out the prayer leaf. She ran one finger across the word in gold embroidery. “ _River._ ” She flipped the leaf over to see the other side. “ _Song._ ”

“Something of a loose translation,” River said as Amy sank down to sit on the edge of the bed again. “I only started going by River Song within the last handful of years or so. I was Melody Pond for most of my life.”

“What happened to you?” Rory asked, speaking for the first time. “How did you wind up here? It was the Silence that took you. How are you with SHIELD now?”

“I was with the Silence for a very long time,” River replied. “Then I left them and was on my own for a while. Then, it was just like I’ve told you. While I was on my own, I worked as a freelance operative. I got on SHIELD’s radar in a bad way. Clint drew the assignment to kill me, but he and Phil brought me in instead. I’ve been here ever since.”

“A very long time?” Rory said, eyeing River skeptically. “You can’t be any older than we are.”

“I was eighty years old in June.”

“So, you _can_ regenerate.” The Doctor visibly perked up the way he always did when confronted with something new and interesting. “When Vastra and I looked at your genetic scans we wondered if— _ouch!”_ The Doctor glared at Phil, who had just stepped on his foot none too gently.

“Maybe save the excitement for later?” Phil said pointedly.

The Doctor sobered up. “Right,” he said, glancing back at Amy and Rory. “Right you are.”

“Eighty _years.”_ Rory sank down onto the bed next to Amy. 

“The Silence sent me and my foster parents back to 1932. They raised me in Scotland.” River smiled ruefully. “They felt that was important, knowing my mother’s roots.” 

“You knew.” Amy had been staring off into space, and Phil wasn’t entirely sure she’d even heard River. Her eyes came up and fixed on River, Clint, and Phil in turn. “You’ve been our friends for years, and the whole time you knew what was going to happen at Demons Run. You could have done something. You could have warned us.”

“Amy, you know exactly why we couldn’t do that,” Clint said. Phil could tell that Clint was walking the line between empathizing with Amy and Rory and being protective of River. No prizes guessing who was going to win that contest. “It could have rewritten River’s whole life if we’d told you.”

River rested her hand on Clint’s back for a second, then took a cautious step toward Amy. 

“I know this isn’t easy for you to hear,” she said, “but your baby is all right. _I_ was all right. The Silence took good care of me, all things considered. I was loved and I was happy.” River looked back at Clint and Phil. “And I still am.”

Amy slowly rose again and faced River, looking down at her from her considerably greater height. River held her ground, but she had to tilt her head back to hold her mother’s gaze.

“River.” Amy’s eyes were hard. “Don’t. Talk. To me.”

Amy turned her back on all of them then, crossing the room to the window. Phil rested his hand on Clint’s shoulder to stop him from following her, because Clint had a look on his face that suggested he was about to say something he’d regret later. Fortunately, Clint quickly shifted his focus to River. Her mouth was set in a firm line and her eyes were carefully blank. Phil had seen that look a handful of times over the years, most often when River had taken a hit in the field that was too serious to shake off.

Rory was staring at the floor. “Guys, I think you should leave,” he said. He looked up at River. “Please.”

River was still for a moment, then nodded. She turned without a word and left. Clint followed. Phil hung back for a moment.

“We really do wish there could have been some other way,” he told Rory. “There just wasn’t one.”

Phil followed Clint and River out of the room. The Doctor stayed behind, but Phil figured he could take care of himself. He found River and Clint outside in the hall.

“Well.” River crossed her arms. “I suppose it’s just as well that I never expected this little talk to end in sunshine and rainbows.”

She was aiming for nonchalant, but just sounded defeated. Phil knew that while River hadn’t expected a happy family reunion she had, on some level, hoped for one.

“They’ll come around,” Clint said. 

“And if they don’t?” River asked.

Because even in spite of her memories of Queens, River couldn’t help but feel discouraged.

“Then it’s their fucking loss,” Clint said. “But they’ll come around.”

“Clint’s right,” Phil said. “It’ll just take some time. Right now, they’re grieving. They need time to deal with it. Trust me, back in college after my mom died I was a mess for about a year. Ask Valerie.”

There was a reason why he and Valerie had had so many dramatic breakups that year. At the time Phil had been certain that he was dealing with everything just fine, thank you very much. In retrospect, someone really should have thrown his ass into therapy.

River smiled ruefully. “And after I came back from the Dianian War and found out Uncle Robert and Aunt Elizabeth were dead, I shot myself and then spent my next regeneration as an emotionless sociopath. I guess I can’t cast stones.” She sighed, shook her head, and looked to Clint. “Can we go home?”

“Yeah. Of course, we can.” Clint looked at Phil. “You’re coming too, right?”

“Absolutely.”

River needed her family around her right now, and that was precisely what she’d get.

*****

_Maybe Phil had a point about waiting,_ the Doctor thought. On the other hand, there was probably nothing that could have truly softened this blow. At any rate, it was done now.

Once River, Clint, and Phil were gone, Amy turned away from the window and faced the Doctor. “So, you’re on their side then, yeah?”

“Amy, there aren’t sides here. River is as much a victim of the Silence as you are,” he replied. How had this all gone so pear-shaped? “And she’s your daughter.”

“She’s _not.”_

“But she is, Amy.” Rory sounded even wearier than he looked, which was saying something. “We’ve seen proof.”

“No.” Amy shook her head violently. “Maybe she was once, but now. . . I know my daughter. You two weren’t there, but I was. I gave birth to her. I know every inch of her. I know how she smells. I know how she cries when she’s hungry. I know how to hold her so she’ll go to sleep. I--” Amy had started to cry again. “We’re never going to get her back, are we?”

The Doctor wished he could offer the comfort of a lie. He was very good at lying. But Amelia deserved better than that.

“No,” he said.

Even if it were possible to untangle the timestreams (a chancy proposition at best) River clearly didn’t want her life meddled with. The Doctor wasn’t under any sort of obligation to honor that, but he was going to do it anyway. 

“But, Amy, that’s not River’s fault.” The Doctor rested his hands on Amy’s shoulders. He wasn’t quite brave enough to go full in for a hug. “I know you’re angry. You should be, but don’t be angry at her. If you’re going to be angry at anyone, be angry at me. The Silence wanted to use her as a weapon against me. I’m the reason this happened.”

Guilt and blame were old friends of his. He could weather it.

Amy brushed the Doctor’s hands off and went to Rory, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face against his chest. Rory held her tight for a moment, then steered her back to the infirmary bed, gently urging her to lie down. The Doctor watched for a moment, then slipped out of the room.

He discovered Dr. Levine standing just outside the door. She was surreptitiously wiping at her eyes. When she saw him, she quickly redonned her glasses and cleared her throat.

“If I’d known that you were going to completely upset my patients, I would have made you wait twenty-four hours before visiting,” she said.

“You heard.” It wasn’t a question. The door had been standing open. The Doctor tilted his head and studied Levine for a moment. “And you knew too, didn’t you? You knew about River. What she is. Where she came from.”

Levine always seemed to be the doctor on call when the Doctor and his companions and their SHIELD friends had been up to shenanigans. It had seemed rather odd that it was the same doctor every time, given the size of SHIELD.

“That’s privileged information,” Levine said. 

“That’s a yes.” The Doctor looked back at Amy and Rory. “Will you keep them here tonight?”

“I don’t think there’s a medical reason to observe them overnight,” Levine replied. “And based on what I’ve heard, I’m not sure spending a night in an infirmary would be the best thing for Amy anyway, emotionally speaking.”

“I’m not sure the TARDIS would be much better, for similar reasons.”

“I can have them put up in SHIELD guest quarters for the night,” Levine said. “Do they have any bags or something you can send over?”

The Doctor promised to see to it, and Levine went back into the infirmary room to check on Amy and Rory. The Doctor was left alone in the corridor, feeling rather at loose ends. He wasn’t quite sure where to go from here, either literally or metaphorically. 

He’d follow his nose. That usually served him well. He’d follow his nose and see where he ended up.

*****

_Home sweet home,_ Clint thought (completely without irony) as they walked into the lobby of their residence hall. God, it was good to be back.

Phil veered toward the hallway to the right, where his quarters were located. “I’m going to go get cleaned up,” he said. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“I think I’m going to hit the shower, too,” Clint said as he and River let themselves into their quarters on the second floor. Going through a battle was roughly on par with running through a burning building. The smell tended to cling.

“Yeah. Go on.” River nudged him toward the bedroom. “I’ll get the coffee started and put the kettle on.” She eyed the small kitchen doubtfully. “And I’ll see if we have anything resembling food in the house.” 

Fifteen minutes of hot water later, Clint felt considerably more human. He puttered around the bedroom, stuffing his dirty tac clothes into a laundry bag and pulling on jeans and a t-shirt. He took out his small in-canal hearing aids and put on his larger, behind-the-ear pair. His eyes strayed to the picture hanging over the dresser, and Clint found himself just standing and looking at it.

River had raised a slightly amused eyebrow at him when he had hung this up in their new quarters. He’d gotten considerably more confused looks at the craft store where he’d taken it to have it matted and framed. Granted, it probably wasn’t the sort of thing people usually brought in; a drawing in blue ballpoint pen on the back of a SHIELD handout, with holes at the corners from where Clint had used to keep it pinned up on his bulletin board. 

River had given it to him way back in the beginning, just a few months after he’d brought her in. That had been back before aliens, time travel, a not-quite-human fiancée, and Avengers had become a part of Clint’s life. At the time it had been just a cool doodle. Its value had been in what it symbolized. By giving it to him, River had proven (at least to Clint) that she wasn’t quite as detached and dour as she’d liked people to think.

Now, of course, he knew that the drawing wasn’t a drawing at all, though in Clint’s mind written Gallifreyan qualified as an art form. The proverb, in an oddly fitting coincidence, was the same one the Silence’s base name had come from: _Demons run when a good man goes to war._ River had told Clint once that that proverb made her think of him.

It had been a long, strange trip with River, and no doubt would continue to be so. Clint wouldn’t trade a second of it.

He heard the tell-tale creak of the bedroom door and River’s footsteps. She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, standing on her toes so that she could rest her chin on his shoulder.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Clint leaned back into her. “Tired. It’s been a long day.” He frowned as his stomach rumbled. “Kind of hungry.”

River chuckled and patted his midsection. “Come on. I think we’ve managed to pull together enough to let us avoid trekking over to the mess hall.”

Phil was already in their kitchen searching through cupboards. “Cookie sheet?” he asked.

“In the drawer under the stove,” River replied.

Clint picked up the frosty ziplock bag lying on the counter and read the handwritten label and cooking instructions with a raised eyebrow. “Valerie left scones in your freezer the last time she was here?”

“Among other things. There’s a meatloaf down there too if we need it.”

They’d just gotten settled in the living room with mugs of coffee and tea when the doorbell buzzed. “How much do you want to bet that’s Fury?” Clint asked, setting aside his mug and getting up to answer the door.

It wasn’t Fury.

“Guys,” Clint said cautiously, bracing one hand against the door frame. “Something I can do for you?”

Steve, Bruce, Thor, and Tony were gathered outside of the door. Clint scanned them quickly, looking for signs of metaphorical torches and pitchforks. He’d kind of expected that they would work out what had gone down at Demons Run. Not a one of them was stupid and they’d all been there to hear what the Doctor had said to River. Clint had really been hoping that they would wait until tomorrow to go on the warpath. 

And yet they looked surprisingly. . .not pissed off. Even Steve wasn’t giving off any righteous anger vibes.

“Fury brought us up to speed on River. Or Melody, I guess I should say,” Steve said. 

“No, it’s definitely _River_ now.” If Fury had briefed them, maybe he’d also diffused any potential explosions over Strike Team Delta’s deception. Still, Clint wasn’t ready to drop the defenses just yet. “And?”

“We came to. . .” Bruce shifted awkwardly. “Offer moral support, I guess?”

_Huh._ Well, that was kind of unexpected.

“We also brought food,” Thor added.

“Yeah, and it’s still pretty hot.” Tony was at the back of the group, flat boxes stacked nearly to his chin. “We come in peace and I’m sweating, here. Can we come in?”

Clint looked over his shoulder. River was standing behind him. She looked bemused, but just shrugged slightly. Clint took that as a yes. He opened the door wider and let his teammates in.

*****

Unconditional support. It wasn’t what River had expected of her new teammates, but it seemed to be what they were offering. It was like whiplash coming on the heels of her talk with Amy and Rory, but it was certainly welcome.

The Avengers piled into Clint and River’s apartment. They had never been there _en masse_ before. Clint and River had invited Steve over a handful of times since the Battle of New York. Thor had visited a couple of times during their weeks of Avengers Summer/Boot Camp. But this was the first time they’d all come around in a clump.

God but they took up a lot of room. 

“Manfredi’s pizza?” Clint said as Tony deposited his load of boxes on the kitchen counter. “How did you get Manfredi’s pizza out here? That’s all the way down in Midtown.”

“Trade secret, my son,” Tony replied. “Plates?”

While Clint directed traffic in the kitchen, River turned to Steve. “I think we might be a little short on plates and glasses,” she said. “Maybe we could go grab the ones from your quarters?”

As on-the-fly excuses went, it was far from River’s best. Fortunately, Steve didn’t seem to find this an odd request, or if he did he was too polite to give any indication. “Sure. Sounds like a good idea.”

Steve’s designated guest quarters (kept in reserve for emergencies on base or, like the weeks of Avengers Camp, extended visits) were on the same floor of the residence hall as Clint and River’s quarters. River waited until they had turned the corner down Steve’s wing before she halted in the middle of the hallway. Steve stopped and looked back at her quizzically.

“You’re honestly not angry with me?” she asked.

River was very good at reading people. She didn’t get the sense at all that Steve was angry with her. On the other hand, River was also predisposed to distrust situations that seemed too easy. Steve had expressed annoyance and frustration before about her habit of holding back information. Given what she’d held back about Demons Run, she’d expected him to be bloody furious.

Steve sighed. He looked oddly chagrinned. “No, I’m not mad at you,” he said.

River didn’t even attempt to hide her skepticism. 

“You know, I haven’t told many people about this,” Steve said, “but the month after the battle, when we all had leave? I went to London to. . .to see someone. And while I was there, the Doctor looked me up.”

“He did?” 

River didn’t know exactly why she was surprised by this. She knew that the Doctor embraced humanity with wide arms. He had friends and acquaintances (and probably enemies) all over the globe, in all times. 

“Yeah. I went out for a walk in the middle of the night and he just turned up.”

“That does sound like him,” River said.

Steve smiled in commiseration. “So, there he was on a street corner in London, and I asked him what I’d wanted to ask ever since I heard the words _time traveler.”_

“You asked him to take you back,” River said.

Steve nodded. “And he said that he could. Or rather he could go back and make sure I never spent seventy years on ice in the first place. Either way I could have had my life back, but then he explained that rewriting Time came at a cost. I decided that cost was too high.”

River knew enough about how the Doctor’s mind worked that she could imagine the points he’d lined up. The Battle of New York was probably at the top of the list. Steve’s sense of duty would never allow him to miss that.

“Anyway, it’s the same way with Demons Run,” Steve continued. “If it had gone another way, we could have lost you. Coulson and Barton would never let that happen, but I hope you know that the rest of us would never want that, either. As hard as it was to see that happen to Amy and Rory, we wouldn’t give you up.”

Up until this moment, River hadn’t realized how afraid she’d been that Demons Run would cause her new team, which was only just starting to gel, to fall apart. In fairness, there had been a number of more pressing worries on her dance card. The relief left her feeling a little wobbly.

“Thanks.” She hoped that Steve wouldn’t comment on the thickness in her voice.

Of course, he didn’t.

“So, plates?” Steve said. “We should get back before the pizza’s all gone.”

“Right you are.”

They snagged the plates and glasses from Steve’s guest quarters and headed back. They found a familiar figure in the hallway outside of Clint and River’s quarters. 

“Hello.” The Doctor eyed their load of dishes. “I don’t suppose you have room for one more, do you?”

He sounded rather hopeful. River smiled.

“I’m sure we can make room. Come in.”

*****

Amy didn’t question it when Dr. Levine led her and Rory out of the building that housed SHIELD Medical. Outside it was a beautiful early autumn evening, and the sun was setting in a blaze of pink and orange light and purple clouds. On any other day Amy would have stopped to admire it, but today she couldn’t summon up any more than a dull internal, _Eh, pretty._

She felt beyond tired, beyond numb. _Apathetic,_ that was the right word. It was kind of novel. Amy was a Scot and a ginger to boot. She didn’t really do apathetic.

Dr. Levine led them past the Research & Development Center, the rear parking lot of the Recreation Center, and a green quad where SHIELD personnel were hanging out on benches, most of them with cups from the base Starbucks. It was scary how well Amy knew this base. Of course, she had been a visitor here often enough, and between River, Clint, and Phil—

Amy quickly shut down that line of thought. She didn’t want to think about River right now. Or Clint. Or Phil.

Amy and Rory followed Dr. Levine into the guest residence hall on the other side of the quad. Levine took them to a room on the ground floor. Amy looked around; it looked like an ordinary hotel room, a living area separated from a bedroom by a partial wall. Her bag from the TARDIS and Rory’s were sitting on the sofa, and there were two guest badges on lanyards on the coffee table. Amy stared at them while Rory and Dr. Levine conferred quietly.

Amy kept having to steer her thoughts away from River. It was hard. This whole base was River’s territory, wasn’t it? As a result, Amy found her brain going off in odd directions, like to her secondary school English class. 

Amy had never been more than a solidly average student, but she’d always had a certain flair for writing. One time her teacher had given the class the assignment of retelling an ancient myth. Amy had chosen her favorite, the story of Pandora’s box. _Why is it that madness always comes packaged in boxes, anyway?_ Pandora, like most women in the old myths, got an unfairly bad rap in Amy’s opinion, but Amy’s retelling had focused on hope. She’d written hope not as a thing to be kept trapped in the box, but as a person. Well, being might be a better term. Hope had chosen to stay, to help Pandora deal with all the ills of the world. _We girls have to stick together,_ hope had said to Pandora, because of course hope was a girl, too.

Just having hope could make even the worst thing in the world more bearable. For a while it had made Melody’s kidnaping more bearable, because of the hope that they could get her back. Then River had come in and taken it away.

_And we’re back to River again._ Clearly this was a losing battle.

“Amy?” Amy glanced up to see Dr. Levine looking at her, and she got the feeling that this was not the first time Levine had spoken at her. “I need to head back to Medical. I’d like to see you again tomorrow. For tonight, just try to rest.”

“Right. Sure.”

Dr. Levine sighed and fished a small plastic bottle out of her lab coat pocket and handed it to Amy. There was a single, small pink pill in the bottom of it.

“It’s a mild soporific, just enough to take the edge off so you can sleep,” Dr. Levine said. “If you need it, take it.”

When Dr. Levine was gone Amy left the bottle on the nightstand and went straight to the bathroom, turning on the shower as hot as she could tolerate. She wanted to wash off both Demons Run and the SHIELD infirmary. Rory appeared in the open doorway as she gracelessly peeled off her clothes. Once she was done, she pulled Rory into the bathroom and stripped him out of his, too. He offered no resistance save for a curiously raised eyebrow.

“I’m not in the mood to be by myself,” Amy said. 

God knew she wasn’t in the mood for anything _else_ and neither was Rory, but the thought of being alone (even if it was just in the shower) was intolerable. Rory nodded in agreement and stepped into the stall after her.

Later, after she was scrubbed, in her own nightclothes, and sitting cross-legged on the bed, Rory appeared with a glass of water. He picked up the pill bottle and held both bottle and glass out to her.

“Come on,” he said. “You need to sleep.”

“And everything will look better in the morning?” Amy attempted to smile. “Mum always says that.”

Rory sat down in front of her. “It may not look any better, but it’ll definitely look worse if we don’t get some rest.”

Amy glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s not even eight o’clock.”

“Is that relevant?”

“Not really.” Jet lag took on a whole new meaning when you dealt with time travel. Amy took the pill bottle and glass of water, but that was as far as she got. “Well,” she said, “I guess now we know how River always knew so bloody much about the Doctor.”

“Yeah,” Rory said. “I can’t help but think that. . .”

“That what?” Amy asked.

“River didn’t have to become our friend,” Rory said after a long pause. “She didn’t have to start traveling with us. She could have said no or told us to stop coming around, but she didn’t. I think she wanted to get to know us. I think she must have missed us too.”

“I know.” Amy closed her eyes and shook her head. “I just can’t look at her and see my baby. I can’t. Not right now.”

“I know.” Rory sighed. “I think I have an easier time with that part. You got to have her with you for those weeks. I didn’t. I knew about her, but it was more. . .” Rory gestured in frustration, like it helped his brain along. “Abstract. I’m not sure if that makes me luckier or unluckier.”

“Me neither.” Amy popped the lid off the bottle and swallowed Dr. Levine’s pill. Rory took the bottle and glass back from her and moved about, tidying things away and turning out the lights. By the time he slipped under the covers with her and pulled her into his arms, Amy was already half-asleep.

Right before she drifted off completely a thought bubbled to the surface of Amy’s mind that actually made her smile.

Her little Melody really had turned out brave, hadn’t she?

*****

Tony had been smart to bring in pizza, the Doctor thought. Pizza, no matter what sort, was casual. It was a no-pressure food. It was practically impossible to have fraught conversations while eating pizza.

“So, I got to hold you, you know,” Tony said to River, reaching for another slice from a box on the coffee table. “Avatar-you, anyway. You were, like, the size of a housecat.” 

River looked a little like she had just trod barefoot into a pile of cold jelly. “You know, Tony, I’m glad that you were there for Amy and Rory. I really am,” she said. “But if this conversation is about to go in a _I once changed your diapers direction,_ I beg you by all that is decent not to tell me.”

The Doctor smiled at the verbal wave of mild horror that swept through the Avengers and tucked into his own slice of pizza. It was amusing, watching this gang interact.

“Diapers?” Tony looked scandalized. “Not to be predictable, but can you see me changing a diaper _ever?_ ”

“Touché,” River replied, reaching for her drink.

River was sitting on the sofa between Phil and Clint, leaning comfortably into Clint’s side. The other Avengers were arranged in a rough semi-circle around the coffee table in straight-backed chairs, while the Doctor had possession of the sole easy chair. It was a good spot to observe from.

The Doctor had questions for River. So many questions. A million and one questions, easily. But for the time being he was content to mostly watch and listen. You could learn all sorts of useful things that way. The Doctor gathered that Nick had given the Avengers the outline of River’s life story. Trust Nicky to have known about River the whole time. No doubt Director Downing did as well. If she didn’t, the Doctor would eat his own bowtie. 

An outline of River’s story was more than the Doctor had. He’d seen the prologue and could take a guess at the table of contents. Still, he’d always been a quick study, and the Avengers’ camaraderie (tentative though it may be) was helping to fill in all manner of blanks. 

“And you’re actually eighty years old,” Bruce said, sounding as if he was still testing out this new information.

“I turned eighty in June,” River replied with a nod. “Still not quite as old as Cap, but old enough that I saw him in the newsreels on Saturdays when my friends and I went to the pictures. My friend Kathy had an enormous crush on you, by the way,” she added to Steve.

Steve chuckled good-naturedly along with everyone else. “And you can regenerate. It’s _regenerate,_ right?” he said, looking to the Doctor.

The Doctor nodded.

“I could. I can’t anymore,” River replied. “I lost the ability several years ago.”

“How?” the Doctor asked, speaking up for the first time. He’d heard of such a thing happening among full Time Lords, but the stories were sketchy at best.

“That I can’t tell you.” River looked a bit regretful over not being able to answer the first real question the Doctor had asked. “I’m afraid that would give a bit too much away.”

“Ah.” The Doctor had a hunch that she was referring to their first meeting. Their first meeting from River’s perspective at any rate; an incident in her past and still in the Doctor’s future. Well, that was nothing that time wouldn’t cure. “Understood. Spoilers.”

“Quite.”

“That was an incredible loss, whatever the reason,” Thor said.

“Not really,” River replied. “Assuming I reach a ripe old age as I am now, I’ll still live longer than any other human being I know of. Besides,” River looked from Clint to Phil, “outliving everyone you love really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Steve murmured something that sounded like, “Amen.”

“How many times have you regenerated?” the Doctor asked.

“Four.”

“Four?” The Doctor couldn’t quite catch his shock in time to keep it from showing. “The Silence got you killed four times in only eighty years? How?”

River only shrugged. “Training to fight the Doctor is a dangerous business,” she said. “And the Silence never tried to get me killed. They weren’t even sure that I could regenerate in the beginning. The first time it happened I was a kid, and it was down to a stupid accident. It was. . .”

River frowned, leaning a little more into Clint. Clint automatically wrapped an arm around her. 

“Terrifying,” the Doctor supplied.

“In a word,” River said.

“It’s terrifying enough for Time Lords who have some idea what to expect.” The Doctor remembered his first regeneration all too well. River had had to go through it as a child, alone and unprepared. That was beyond terrifying. It must have been horrific.

River seemed to read his thoughts.

“I survived,” she said. “I was all right.”

“A bit more than all right, I’d say,” the Doctor replied. Really, this whole situation was remarkable. The Doctor shook his head in wry amusement. “Human plus. Human plus Time Lord. Congratulations, River. You’re something new.”

New and resilient and really rather wonderful. The Doctor would expect nothing less of the child of Amy and Rory. He had no doubt that, given a little time, they’d come to see that too.

*****

Rory desperately wished that he could sleep, but by three o’clock in the morning the best he’d achieved was a sort of dull, grey, half-repose. Zombie at rest. Amy was sound asleep though, a fact for which Rory was grateful. Dr. Levine’s little pink pill had been as good as promised. Amy was curled up against Rory’s chest, her breathing slow and even. That was good. She needed to rest.

Rory would have followed suit if he could, but his mind was still chasing itself in circles. Not quite as frantically as it had been earlier, but enough to keep him awake. 

River Song was their daughter. River, their friend with whom they had traveled all over Time and Space, whom they had saved the world with no more than a few months ago. The Silence had raised to be a weapon. She had managed to turn into a superhero instead, just like Amy said she’d be.

Rory felt a pang when he thought of River talking to them in SHIELD Medical. She’d been trying not to let on, but Rory knew she’d been hurt by how he and Amy had taken the news. Rory couldn’t help but feel guilty over that, even though he knew he had to make Amy the priority. Amy was hurting, too. They all were.

_Happy families all around, then._

He was mired so deeply in his thoughts that it took a moment for the faint buzzing to register, and another moment for Rory to recognize it as his mobile ringing. He eased away from Amy and out of bed and fished the phone out of his bag. 

“Hello?”

“You’re not at home,” the voice on the other end said. “I’m in your kitchen. You’re not here.”

“Dad?”

Why was his dad calling? Why would his dad be at their house? Rory quickly wracked his brain. What _day_ was it even? He checked the date feature on the bedside clock. Sunday. It was three o’clock here, which meant that it was eight o’clock in London. . .of course. Sunday breakfast. Brian Williams often swung over to have breakfast with Amy and Rory on Sunday mornings. It had become something of a tradition since they’d all moved up to London.

“I stopped by the bakery for croissants,” Brian Williams said. “Where are you two? You usually haven’t made it out of your pajamas by this time.”

“Yeah. Um. . .” Rory glanced down at Amy, who hadn’t stirred. He moved into the living room, careful to keep his voice down. “Sorry. We decided to go out of town for a couple of days,” he said, sitting down on the small sofa. “It was rather last-minute. I didn’t think to call and tell you. I’m sorry.”

It was a bit of a struggle, getting his mind back into “real life” mode. Rory had been dealing with Amy’s kidnapping for almost two months by his time. But as far as Brian Williams knew, he’d seen his son and daughter-in-law just a few days ago.

Brian was silent for a moment. Of course, he was probably a little bit put out. Rory was about to apologize again when his dad interrupted him.

“Rory, what’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing.”

“No, you’re upset about something. I can hear it in your voice.” Rory recognized that tone. _Persistence_ might as well be Brian Williams’s middle name sometimes. “What’s wrong? Is there something I can do to help?”

“Nothing. It’s--” Rory sighed, resting his elbows on his knees and pinching the bridge of his nose. 

He had to tell his dad something. Moreover, he _wanted_ to tell his dad what was wrong. Rory and his father weren’t necessarily given to sitting down for long heart-to-heart talks, and Brian drove Rory mildly mad on a routine basis. But that didn’t mean they weren’t close in their way. After all, it had been just the two of them for quite a long time. 

“There was a baby. There was going to be a baby,” Rory said. “But we lost her. Amy and me, we just needed to get away somewhere quiet for a couple of days.”  


It was close enough to the truth, wasn’t it? There was a vast ocean of difference between a vaguely implied miscarriage and what had really happened, but it would be enough to explain their state of mind when they went home to London. Rory and Amy wouldn’t have to pretend that everything was fine.  


“Oh, Rory.” Rory could tell that his dad was distressed. When Brian Williams was distressed he got calm and quiet. Never one for making a show. “I’m so, so sorry.”  


“Yeah.” Rory slowly slumped back into the sofa, head tilted back, looking at the ceiling. “Me too.”  


“Is Amy all right?”  


“Physically? Yeah, she’s fine.” _Thank you, Dr. Levine._ “Beyond that? She’s coping.”  


“How are you?”  


“I’m. . .” The _fine_ was on the tip of Rory’s tongue, but he couldn’t quite say it. He rubbed one hand over eyes that had started to burn dangerously. “I think I’ve let everyone down.”  


He hadn’t gotten to Amy in time. For God’s sake, he hadn’t even noticed that she was missing, replaced by an avatar. He’d let Melody be taken. He’d pushed River away.  


“Rory, no, you haven’t,” Brian said firmly. “I promise you haven’t let anyone down. We can’t see every bad thing coming. We certainly can’t control what gets thrown at us.”

Rory gave his eyes one final, determined scrub. “So, what are we supposed to do then?”

“You make right what you can,” his dad replied simply. “The rest you learn to let go.”

“Yeah.” It had been much the same when Rory’s mum had died, though he’d never heard his dad put in in those words. “I’m just not sure how to make any of this right.”

“Give it a little time. You’ll start to find ways,” Brian said. “Do you know when you think you’ll come home?”

“I’m not sure. Soon, I think.” Item #337 on the list of things to address in the morning when they were all properly awake. “If it’s more than a day or two I’ll call and let you know.”

“Good enough. I’ll keep an eye on things until you get back.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Rory crawled back into bed, trying to be careful not to wake Amy. But as he settled down beside her, her voice came from the depths of the rumpled blankets.

“How’s Brian?” she asked.

“Worried about us,” Rory replied. 

“Brian’s a love. I hate to make him worry, but I’m glad you told him something. I think a good cover story is beyond me right now.” Amy rolled over onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “Rory? River’s our daughter.”

“I know.”

Amy was quiet for several moments. “I think I want to go home for a while,” she said at last. “To London. I think I need a bit of real life.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Rory had been thinking along much the same lines. A stretch of workaday routine sounded like a holiday at the seaside. “We’ll tell the Doctor in the morning. He’ll understand.”

“Well, of course he will.”

“We should let River know, too.”

“Mmm.” Amy didn’t comment further. She just burrowed into Rory’s arms and went back to sleep.

*****

The impromptu Avengers pizza party wound up going pretty late, late enough that River felt justified in having a bit of a lie-in the next morning. Yesterday had been long (even if she hadn’t gone into battle herself) and there was no place that they absolutely needed to be until afternoon. Even Clint, one of those unfathomable creatures who was usually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at dawn, was still asleep when River’s phone buzzed at 0730.

River plucked her phone off the nightstand with some muttered Gaelic curses and squinted at the screen. She woke up quickly when she saw the text from Rory.

_Going home this morning. Leaving at 9 after Amy sees Levine._

“Is the world ending?” Clint asked, yawning and stretching his arms over his head.

“It would seem not,” River replied, passing him the phone. 

“Huh.” Clint frowned at the message. “Does that mean they want us to be there?”

River had had the same initial question and had already worked through the problem to its logical conclusion. “I think Rory must, at least, or he wouldn’t have bothered with the message. If nothing else,” she added, “I suppose it means that he doesn’t object to us coming.”

Accordingly, River, Clint and Phil walked over to the guest residence hall at 0900. The TARDIS was parked on the grassy quad next door. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory were waiting outside of it.

They had done this so many times over the past three years. It had even started to feel routine to River, to wave Amy and Rory off on their next adventure and start idly looking forward to when they’d pop up again with the Doctor. This, though, was by far the most awkward parting they’d ever had.

Amy still wasn’t making eye contact with River (or with Clint or Phil for that matter). But she did say good-bye, followed up by a brisk, “Don’t get yourselves killed saving the world, yeah?” before she turned and stepped into the TARDIS.

As a sign of hope? Well, River had worked with less. She allowed herself to feel a little bit of optimism. 

“Take heart,” the Doctor said, patting River on the shoulder. “Pond’s never down for long.”

River nodded. “Keep an eye on them for me, okay?”

“Two eyes. Promise.” the Doctor replied. He nodded to Clint and Phil and followed Amy into the TARDIS.

That left Rory. He was standing at a distance, arms folded. River debated whether she should go over and try to talk to him. River had been sure his text meant that he wanted her there to say good-bye, but now she wasn’t so sure. Or possibly Rory had changed his mind. It was hard to read. Rory had gone to ground, emotionally speaking, no doubt trying to work out what he was feeling about this whole situation. River knew the signs; that was often her way of dealing with upheaval. Like father, like daughter, apparently.

Just as River decided that it might be best to give Rory space he abruptly started moving, striding toward her with an unreadable expression. River barely had time to brace herself before Rory grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug. After a frozen moment of surprise, River hugged him back.

After several seconds Rory finally loosened his grip, clearing his throat awkwardly. He drew back far enough to be able to look down at River.

“I just want you to know,” he said, “that you turned out good. You turned out really, really good.”

River swallowed hard. “Thank you, Rory.”

Rory nodded and stepped back. “You know, me and Amy taking a break from all of this. . .it’s not forever, all right? We just need some time.”

“Of course,” River replied immediately. “Take all the time you need.”

Rory turned to Clint and Phil. “You guys try not to get into too much trouble,” he said. “And thank you. Thanks for coming to help us.”

Rory boarded the TARDIS, the engines fired up, and it phased from existence with its characteristic pulsing wheeze. River turned to Clint and Phil. They both looked like some weight had been taken off their shoulders.

“Well. I can’t say I was expecting that,” River said. The corners of her mouth were turned up in a small, cautious smile. She couldn’t quite repress it. She didn’t even want to.

“You see? I told you they’d come around,” Clint said.

“It’s definitely a good start,” Phil added.

“It is.”

River knew that she and Amy and Rory would never be a regular sort of family. They’d never be parents and child in the traditional sense. The Silence had taken away any chance of that. But maybe they could create something that was their own. _Something new,_ as the Doctor would say. Something that was still good. That was certainly a hope worth holding on to.


End file.
